https://makertube.net/c/veronicaexplains/videos

This is absolutely new to me and I just invested 5 minutes into researching this and watched some videos. I know I shouldn’t but I really laughed out loud after watching the different eras Bombardino Crocodilo lived in. This is hilarious and gives me strong skibidi toilet vibes.

But yeah, monetizing this shit and sell school bags for children? Fuck that.

!mrlovenstein@sh.itjust.works

In their view, the world is black and white. They hate to be inbetween, they need to “choose a side”. They can’t say US and China suck both, or fuck Israel but also fuck Hamas, they need to be “pro” something. Because most of them grew up in it, they are mostly opposed to western countries - but they can’t leave it like that, they need to be anti imperialist. And that means siding with Russia, Iran, North Korea, China etc., the enemies of the west. It is absurd, but that’s how easy it is. Some months ago we all watched how Iran killed thousands of its citizen on the streets - now that the US attacked Iran, they sympathize with the Islamist mullahs! Because… fuck Israel or something? It’s a really narrow world view and it makes of course no sense, I mean who is imperialist if not Russia lol?

Check out !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works, but you need to log in from another instance, as your admins don’t want you to see that community.

I don’t really understand that post. It seems to be lemmy.world, not piefed. The no Hamas comment is still standing there, so it seems it’s more about the “rapey”?

To be honest, you are on an instance that is apologetic of Russia and North Korea, I don’t think that’s better either. Censorship is definitely way more present on lemmy.ml, it’s just your world view aligns better with the “anti imperialistic” stance lemmy.ml is holding up.

Without the context, it’s difficult to discuss. But I don’t see why we should favour one religious extremist group over the other tbh

Hmm, I don’t think sh.itjust.works is being blocked in general by ml, but I could imagine the Lemmy devs have blocked !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works in particular as they are being exposed there.

If you started a project, wouldn’t you list your server up top?

You can bet I would. But when the participation in the project grew in the way Lemmy did, I would step down from my instance admin rule and pass to someone else. I am not saying they should unlist the instance, all I say is that the roles should not be mixed.

Block it and move on.

That’s what I did, but that doesn’t mean I can’t talk about the topic here.

Sorry I just don’t think it’s right to pass judgement on people for doing what they want with their project or instance

I can understand what you mean. The problem is that this constellation prevent Lemmy from growing because people are weirded the fuck out by the statements that are being made on lemmy.ml and especially the moderation strategy of the developers. I can recommend taking a look at !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works and sort by Top. Some of the stuff is about others members of the tankie triad and some is bs, but it quickly gets clear who you are talking to.

The Lemmy software developers are the admins of lemmy.ml at the same time. Instead of being neutral, they push their questionable political agenda onto the instance. lemmy.ml is 8th now, but 3 years ago that was different. Also the most open source communities have been there, I don’t know really if that changed meanwhile.

That’s something that is criticized often - that the devs are not independent but instead try to push their instance as the “main instance”. But yeah I guess there are a lot of people like you. Don’t forget there is no Karma system, it does no harm to change the account from time to time, I do it yearly.

I agree. I only mentioned it because your motivation was the list of blocked users from ml you already had.

I think you will still see users from lemmy.ml despite the instance block. I have blocked it about 2 years ago and its the only reason why I am still here. I hesitated at first because of the open source communities, but then I thought, fuck it

I guess OP means the Leopards eating the face of the Islamist who attacked the pride in Berlin. As in his aim of intimidating the pride participants did not work out, but the opposite is true, more people stand with pride. But I admit that’s kind of far-fetched.

I swear, it get’s easier after the first chapter. I know, it’s a very historical section, I think the typical descriptive background a political book like this needs to introduce before it can formulate its thesis. After the broad global overview the book focuses more on US political history and then it gets interesting when it finally addresses the checks and balances. For me as a European, I learned a lot of new things and it made my view on the US clearer. From the first chapter I only remember the peruanian (?) president was a Japanese guy, lol.

I wanted to read more, so I started using bookwyrm at the start of this year. My SO and I set up a challenge - 12 books this year. It works and I am now at 8/12. I read fiction but also a lot of political literature.

Through some exciting fiction books you just read through - it’s run, you get sucked into it and want to know what happens in the next chapter. Finding those is generally luck and really depends on your taste. The last book I read through this was was Lying on the Couch by Irvin D. Yalom. He is a famous psychologist that writes fiction, it’s pretty easy to read but also has its depths. If you’re interested in psychoanalysis, it’s nice literature, I have read about 5 books from him.

Now, the “hard books” are different. There are different kind of hard books, some are very well written, others need a lot of background knowledge, others are just plain boring.

An important aspect for those books for me is, what is my motivation to read them? Do I think they are classics you need to have read, do I think the topic sounds interesting, or is it already part of a field I am familiar with?

In the latter case I will suck it in no matter what, at the moment I am reading a book about life in the early modern period in the holy Roman Empire.

I have another one from Herfried Münkler, a German political scientist which us particularly hard to read because you need so much background knowledge. I read it page by page, but only if I feel like it. There is no sense in forcing myself, I will experience the typical “reading but not understanding”. I often read 1-2 pages because the content is so dense, and enjoy if I understood a topic. To give another example for the more international audiences, I read How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. It is from the first Trump presidency so a bit outdated, but it was a really exciting read, I learned a lot about the US political system. I read through it within 2-3 weeks.

Now regarding the classics you need to read: Fuck that. There is so much classic literature that might be important, but it’s just too boring or annoying to read. There are a lot of exceptions, but they are hard to find. The last one I read and was really happy about (also because it’s short) is The Stranger from Albert Camus.

Okay, but here my absolute advice for serious reading: Never force yourself to read through a book you don’t like. I am a bit of a perfectionist person myself and it was really hard to put a book away, but oh boy, reading is so much fun since I am doing it! I have about 7 books I started and I read them in parallel. One of then I haven’t touched in 5 months and maybe I will never read it. Another one just takes time like the Münkler one and I will read through 3 others in the meantime. But fuck this “I need to finish a book I started”, sentiment.

If this price is not issued by the state, then I don’t see a “problem in democracy”. Infantinos peace price was also ridiculous, but should we put him in jail for it?¹ The same accounts for Axel Springer - believe me, I hate them with every cell in my body, but I can’t prevent them from issuing fantasy prices and giving them out to the people they want. And I don’t want to live in a society where this is possible. This is the downside of a democracy, things you need to bear and live with. Which does not mean we do not need take Axel Springer to the courts for all the other evil things they did which were against the law.

¹of course we need to put him in jail, but not for the peace price

Definitely no valid argument against “western democracy”. Do you think having your oligarchs “under control” and throwing them out of the window is so much better?

User instance checks out